John P. Elwood is a partner at Vinson & Elkins in Washington, D.C., specializing in appellate litigation and review of administrative action. He served as senior deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 until 2009 and served as an assistant to the Solicitor General from 2002 until 2005. Previously, he was an attorney in the department’s Criminal Division, where he argued cases in the federal courts of appeals and tried criminal cases in federal district court. Elwood also represented the Justice Department as an ex officio member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Elwood has received both the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service and the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service — the Justice Department’s two top awards for lawyers.

After graduating from law school, Elwood clerked for Judge J. Daniel Mahoney of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In 2001, he taught a seminar at the George Washington University School of Law titled “Constitutional Law and the Supreme Court.”